Home Front: Viet Nam and Families at War

By Willard D. Gray

When will the war finally come to an end? Home Front: Viet Nam and Families at War recounts the private ordeals of several families who bore the brunt of Americas war in Viet Nam. Their experiences, an ongoing tragedy since the last U.S. soldiers left Vietnamese soil, reveal the physical and psychological wounds of war wounds that dont discriminate between soldier and family. From the backwoods of Maine to the rugged wide open landscape of Montana, we meet a dozen soldiers and their families and hear their stories.

Author Willard D. Gray knows the fallout firsthand. His oldest son spent two years and eighteen consecutive days in Viet Nam as a BAMC trained medic, most of his tour served in the bush or in the grist mill of an evac. hospital. When Willards son returned home in April 1970 without an honorable discharge, the Gray family endured several months of tension, anger, and disappointment. Tommy Gray had come home a completely changed young man. Exhaustive efforts by his family to upgrade his discharge status and remove the stigma placed upon him and those closest to him ultimately failed to reunite the family. But Willards crusade on behalf of his son soon grew to include others in the community who had also been traumatized and marginalized by the war. A national tragedy became a personal quest. Others who had been left to their own devices after the war, with no help from the government or their local communities, surely needed support.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 20, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462841806

Willard D. Gray

Willard was born and raised in rural Illinois. He successfully completed a career in the Army and later owned his own automotive business. His previous work, a docu-novel entitled End of a Silence: Full Moon over Fox Prairie, offers a vivid retelling of a tumultuous event that occurred near his childhood home in the 1800s.

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Copyright © 2008 by Willard D. Gray.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Preface

PART I:

*TWO DIFFERENT ERAS—

TWO CONTRASTING OUTLOOKS*

Chapter 1: MIA

Chapter 2: Casualties of War

Chapter 3: Homecoming

PART II:

HEALTH OF A NATION

Chapter 4: Agent Orange

Chapter 5: PTSD

Chapter 6: Home Life

Chapter 7: Suicide

PART III:

FROM THE ASHES

Chapter 8: Outcasts

Chapter 9: Homeless

Chapter 10: Career Moves

Chapter 11: Honor Restored

Afterword

Note to the reader: Thanks to the encouragement of a handful of American vets, I have chosen to use the traditional spelling of Viet Nam, which was coined in the seventeenth century by the Vietnamese emperor Gia Long and means roughly people of south China. As American vet and photographer-author Ted Englemann has pointed out, to combine the two words is ethnocentric at best, culturally insensitive at worst. Imagine, Englemann writes, referring to the Big Apple as Newyork.

Acknowledgements

I would indeed be remiss if I did not recognize a few loyal individuals who stood shoulder to shoulder with my family during a traumatic time in our lives and those who were willing to come forward as the social situation grew worse. Especially:

The late Beauford Wilson, a lifelong friend and neighbor.

The late John Shorty Lanear, lifelong friend and welder.

The late Pearl Dunahee, oil field teamster and neighbor.

Gene Dunahee, childhood neighbor and friend.

Acquired during our troubled days:

Dan Yount, owner and publisher of my childhood city newspaper.

Judy Gassman, perceptive and knowledgeable journalist employed by my childhood paper.

Donald Bridwell and his late brother, Leonard Jay.

William Bill Dallas Blacker and his late wife, Fern.

Harold Royer, 97 years old, and Julie, his late wife of 64 years.

Tom O’Brien, a newly arrived farmer in my childhood region, together with his sons Larry and Jim, and their wives Teresa and Lisa.

Billie R. Brian, independent oil producer and promoter.

Joe and Pat Funk, former in-laws of my youngest son.

And

William Greenleaf and Matt Kite, inspired writers.

Stan Novak, artist for cover.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my late daughter, Mary Catherine Gray Jones, who toiled selflessly on her brother’s behalf, only to pay a heavy price for such devotion. She hoped to erase the stigma he brought home with him from the battlefields of Viet Nam, but never lived to see the day.

It is also dedicated to my wife of over fifty-seven years, Mary Antoinette Hanaka Gray, whose sacrifice is unequaled: first as a nurse serving her country in World War II, and second, as a mother looking after her children during my many years of absence while I served in the regular Army. For her efforts, she earned the scorn of many in her community and estrangement from—and division within—her own family.

I would be remiss if I did not recognize a small but loyal following of friends and neighbors who understood and supported us in our troubling time. They stood by us when no one else would.

Finally, I recognize the sacrifices made by every victim of war. So many of my fellow veterans left the best of their lives on the battlefield and have been trying ever since to repair the wounds sustained while serving their country. My prayers go to them and their families. May each of them one day learn to forgive their tormentors—and themselves.

Preface

The casket is resting atop the burial vault when Mary and I arrive at the little cemetery. A few floral wreaths and a half-dozen potted plants have been placed around the casket, and the cover is adorned with a large floral spray which reads Mother. A dozen folding chairs huddle around the casket under a canvas canopy that has been erected to shield us from the afternoon sun.

The casket is closed, with Marianne Seibert resting inside. I have known Marianne for many years, and I know she was, indeed, a loving, caring mother. She was also a poet, teacher, and artist. And she was my good friend.

Only a few mourners have come to pay their respects. Besides her husband Stanley, there are daughters Diane and Barbara, their husbands and children, and four of Marianne’s closest friends. The family wanted to keep the service small, and I know Marianne would have approved.

The cemetery occupies the top of a low hill surrounded by checkerboard fields of corn and beans. It is very peaceful and quiet on this warm Saturday afternoon. As the minister begins speaking in low tones, I lift my eyes and look out over the fields and think about the poem Marianne wrote a month before she died. I have read it so many times I know it word for word:

If I should die, know this of me—

There is a little of my home,

Of Germany, in this land, but I am free.

Her flowers, her valleys where I used to roam,

Her woods, her rivers I so loved,

The dust so shaped by family and friends

Under a German sky, a German sun,

Has made a small part of this land her own.

And if my son died under a foreign sky,

So can I . . . so can 1 . . .

With death approaching, Marianne’s thoughts were on the hills, valleys, rivers, and forests of the Cologne region of Germany, where she grew up. She was sentimentally attracted to a part of the earth and memories that would accompany her to her final days in another land.

But the poem ends, as so many things began and ended for Marianne, with thoughts of her son Michael:

And if my son died under a foreign sky,

So can I . . . so can 1 . . .

I feel sure that as she closed her eyes for the last time, she was thinking of Michael. Marianne has surrendered to death, but she never surrendered her hope that Michael might yet come home, that he had not died in that fiery helicopter crash in Viet Nam as the Army insisted.

The brief service is over. The small tape player begins playing a German song, and my eyes return to the casket. I will miss Marianne, but I know she is at peace now, after enduring so much. Stanley, hunched in grief, comforted by his daughters, will have to continue somehow without her.

As will Mary and I. For many years we shared a bond with the Seiberts. They spent decades trying to learn the truth about what happened to their son, while Mary and I tried to cope with what happened to ours. I remember the last time I saw Tommy, his face grimly set, his eyes narrow and dark, his hair falling in a lank wave across his sweaty forehead. Tommy returned from Viet Nam alive, but only as a shadow of the young man who had gone there. He scorned his family, and my efforts to have his less-than-honorable discharge upgraded.

Mary and I have shared that bond of loss and grief with the Seiberts. And we aren’t alone. There is Penny Hayes, whom I have known for several years. Penny married Viet Nam veteran Ken Hayes, and paid dearly for Ken’s involvement in the war even though she didn’t even know him at the time.

I need to forget the bad parts of the past, Penny told me after Ken’s death. I need to forget what it was like to wake up with a gun pointed at my head, or to be held with that neck hold Ken learned from Army training, to have someone beside me think I am the enemy.

It wasn’t Stanley and Marianne Seibert who started the war in Viet Nam, or Penny Hayes, or my family. It was a flawed U.S. foreign policy which ultimately failed. But the policymakers have not been called upon to pay the price for their mistakes.

How many other families have paid that awful price? How many are still paying? How many have been devastated by what happened to their sons and brothers and husbands in Viet Nam? And for what? How many American families have been betrayed by the very government that sent their young men to fight and die in distant jungles?

Anger rises up inside me, accompanied by a deep, abiding bitterness at that sense of betrayal. I turn to face the afternoon sun, looking out over the cultivated fields, trying to hold onto the peaceful setting. Perspiration runs down my neck, under my collar. I can taste it in the corners of my mouth.

In 1970, more than eight out of ten Americans believed what they were told by Washington about Viet Nam. Only 18% knew it was outright lies and propaganda. In the farm country of southeastern Illinois, it was anathema to question the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. The Grays and the Seiberts were the only purveyors of variant views regarding the U.S. government’s propaganda. In their lonely search for enlightenment about Michael, the Seiberts were reviled by relatives and neighbors. Mary and I also faced hatred and recriminations by local citizens.

Our daughter paid, too: she lost a once-loving brother. Mary Catherine was uniquely able to adapt to circumstances and surroundings throughout her short life. With a degree in art from Rutgers University, Mary became a co-founder of the Rutgers’ Art Review and was a week-end escort at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York. Before a two-year bout with a brain tumor took her from us in 1993, she begged me not to tell Tommy of her illness or impending death. My daughter once told me, I will never have children. I wouldn’t want them to go through the trauma that we have had to bear.

Most of the mourners have gone now from the hilltop cemetery, and I can see that Mary is ready to go. My eyes return to the closed casket, and my thoughts return to Marianne Seibert. Many years ago she asked me to help her write a book about what happened to our families, and the betrayal of a government that was supposed to protect us. I was involved in too many projects and didn’t feel that I had the time to devote to such a book. Now I regret the decision.

Maybe it’s time, I think as Mary and I turn to walk slowly toward our car. How many families have endured the same kinds of grief and loss that we’ve had to endure? Many books have been written about the horrors of war that were faced by America’s young soldiers in Viet Nam, but I have not found a single book about the horrors that awaited their families when those men came home.

Can I find those families who are still grieving silently today, three decades later? Will they talk to me? Thousands of soldiers returned home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a complex and sometimes volatile condition which was not even recognized by the U.S. government as a disability until 1982. What about the families of soldiers listed as missing in action? Politicians milked the MIA issue long after it had any credibility. Viet Nam veterans returned home to a hostile America, where they were jeered and spat upon. How did this affect their families? How did a man return home to his wife and children after viewing and participating in the carnage of modern war? What was it like for parents whose sons never came home? What was the effect of a less-than-honorable discharge, which barred a man from over 40% of American jobs? What about the families of men who were severely wounded, or exposed to Agent Orange?

I glance at Mary who walks beside me, looking down, quiet in her grief.

I will write the book. It is a silent promise to Marianne Seibert. I have to let people see what has happened. I have to make them understand.

PART I:

*TWO DIFFERENT ERAS—

TWO CONTRASTING OUTLOOKS*

On April 17, 2002, two American F-16 fighter jets piloted by Illinois Air National Guardsmen were screaming over rugged Afghanistan when the pilots detected antiaircraft fire from the ground below. Despite being told to hold their fire by AWACS controllers circling overhead, they let loose a 500-pound laser-guided bomb, killing four Canadian soldiers and wounding eight others. The Canadians had been conducting antitank exercises with live ammo. And, though the U.S. military had been notified of the training mission well ahead of time, the pilots may have been left out of the loop.

As details of the friendly fire incident began to emerge, the American public learned about go pills and their wide use in the U.S. military. Before flying the ill-fated mission, the two pilots had been ordered by their superiors to take amphetamines and had dutifully complied. Had the mission ended as most usually did—without tragedy for the Americans and their allies—the pilots would have been ordered afterward to take the edge off with a few sleep-inducing no-go pills. In this case, they were given antidepressants after they touched down. (1)

Just moments earlier, the pilots’ range of emotions that would typically be experienced during battle—fear, resolve, and euphoria—had been synthetically squeezed by Dexedrine, a dextro amphetamine known to induce, among other symptoms, paranoia. (2)

When the smoke finally cleared, the somewhat muted criticism in the States paled in comparison to the furor north of the border. Canadian citizens, especially family members of the victims, were shocked by the seeming incompetence of the American pilots, not to mention the dangerous practice of putting jacked-up fighter pilots in the cockpits of thirty-million-dollar killing machines.

Those of us who lived through Viet Nam, however, weren’t so shocked. Parents, spouses, siblings, children—and of course the Viet Nam vets themselves—already knew well the volatile art of mixing drugs with war. It was an old practice, dating back at least to America’s guerilla war in the Philippines at the dawn of the 20th century. Back then, soldiers used opium.

In Viet Nam, men and women in the American military had more options at their disposal, including speed, heroin, hash, and plain old marijuana, as ubiquitous as cheap canned beer. Combat medics like my son were encouraged to take uppers in the field—whatever it took to remain active and alert. And combat medics like my son were kicked out of the service when they blurred the line between professional and recreational drug abuse. Somehow, only the military higher-ups, with the tacit understanding of the Defense Department and members of Congress, missed the absurdity. That, or they simply saw no reason to blanch at their own hypocrisy.

Drugs, as PBS commentator Bill Moyers pointed out after the tragedy in Afghanistan, are the hidden weapons of modern warfare. Their use in Viet Nam was so rampant, Moyers stated flatly, many soldiers came home addicted… But when those addicted came home, they were largely on their own; our government, whether Democrat or Republican, considered waging a war on drugs more important than helping addicted people recover. (³)

In 1968, after the Tet Offensive had disabused many of the notion of a quick war, as many as 1,000 American soldiers were being arrested every week for possession of marijuana. In one case study involving Major General John Cushman’s GIs in the Mekong Delta, heroin use ran as high as twenty percent. By 1973, it had peaked at thirty-four percent across the board in Viet Nam. While Americans were contributing roughly $88 million to the Vietnamese drug market, over a thousand U.S. soldiers were sent packing each month, returning stateside as drug addicts and the owners of less-than-honorable and dishonorable discharges. (4)

Once home, they were left to their own devices. No debriefing. No drug counseling. Just the certain knowledge that their blemished records would forever haunt them.

Not everyone who served in Viet Nam abused drugs, of course. The majority never touched the stuff, professionally or recreationally. And most soldiers, whether they were using drugs or not, comported themselves with honor and dignity while selflessly fighting a dubious war, many losing their lives in the proud service of their country. Those who survived came home changed. And they found a changed world awaiting them.

Surely the mishap in Afghanistan would have been incomprehensible to them before their tour in the bush. Now, some three decades later, it seems a predictable outcome to the fifty- and sixty-somethings whose idealism took a direct hit in Viet Nam. For in much wisdom is much vexation, says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Nothing educates quicker than war, its lessons dispensed in stark and brutal fashion. What Viet Nam and every war since has brought home to soldiers and their families is that we stand to lose more than our lives in battle. If we’re not careful, we lose hope. We lose moral clarity and the courage to insist on the truth, however discomfiting. We lose ourselves.

#

Is there any way to make right the wrongs that Viet Nam dealt to the men and women who fought there, and for their families who also pay the price?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. But an amnesty for those who were given less-than-honorable discharges would go a long way toward helping.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a former lobbyist for the United Church of Christ, testified in front of Congress several times in the mid-1970s. He had studied the issue extensively, even helping some Viet Nam vets upgrade their discharge status. He went public with his findings in The Nation on December 24, 1977.

There were, Lynn testified, more than 450,000 Viet Nam vets who had been sent home between 1964 and 1973 with something less than a fully honorable discharge. According to Lynn, the U.S. military had issued 32,000 dishonorable (for felonies) or bad conduct discharges and 425,000 undesirable or general discharges with no hearing in most cases and with minimal due process protections even when hearings were held [no verbatim transcripts, no confrontation with hostile witnesses]. The discharges were rarely given for serious crimes, but usually for absence, disobedience, political activism, and trivial noncriminal misdemeanors related to an unwillingness to adjust to military life.

There have been some 30 amnesties issued by the presidents and Congress through the 1940s. The last amnesty was issued on December 24, 1952, by President Truman for, All persons convicted for having deserted between Aug 1945 and June 25, 1950. On December 8, 1863, President Lincoln issued the following, Full pardon to all implicated in or participating in the existing rebellion with exception and subject to oath.

As part of my efforts to secure amnesties for Viet Nam veterans, I met personally with Barry Lynn in New York City in the early 1970s, along with Louise Ransom. She and her husband Robert lost their son Michael to Friendly Fire.

In those days, the memberships of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Disabled American Veterans were almost wholly made up of WW II veterans, with a few Korean War veterans. All quasi-military organizational decisions were thus made by members reflecting the patriotic sentiments of men who had won a big war but had not, in the public’s collective mind, lost a war.

FOOTNOTES:

1)     U.S. pilots took drugs prior to Canadian deaths, court told, Irish Examiner, January 15, 2003.

2)     Military looks to drugs for battle readiness, by Brad Knickerbocker, The Christian Science Monitor, August 9, 2002.

3)     NOW: with Bill Moyers (PBS), Jan. 24, 2003.

4)     Higher and Higher: American Drug Use in Viet Nam, by Peter Brush, Viet Nam Magazine, December 2002.

Chapter 1: MIA

The Seibert Family

At the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., visitors who stop at panel 20W, line 119, will come across the name of Michael Robert Seibert. It doesn’t say how or when he died in Viet Nam, simply that he was one of over 58,000 men and women who never returned from the war. His fate, though dimly seen, is right there, etched in stone.

A cursory search on the Internet tells us a little more about Michael. He was from Parkersburg, Illinois, and served with the 1st Cavalry Division. His tour of duty began on January 23, 1969, and ended seven months later on August 9, when he was killed near Tay Ninh, South Viet Nam, by hostile fire, his helicopter incinerated as it crashed to the earth. His body was eventually recovered. He was twenty years old.

Michael’s DD Form 1300, issued from Army Headquarters by the Office of the Adjutant General on October 2, 1969, is more succinct: killed in action.

End of story.

#

Back in Illinois, the sun is rising on the flat horizon, the early morning light turning everything—including the cornfields surrounding the Seibert family home—into gold. The year is 1969. It’s Saturday morning in late August, and Michael’s two sisters, Diane, 14, and Barbara, 11, are watching Bugs Bunny on TV.

The closest town is Parkersburg—just a crossroads, really—seven miles away. Population 200. This is prairie country, where support for the American war machine is, for all practical purposes, universal, where dissent means ostracism. Summers here burn hot and humid. Lean, sun-baked muscles glisten in the early-morning sun as men bale hay, repair fences, and dig irrigation ditches. The locals stick together—like the stubborn, blue-white clay they plow.

As Diane and Barbara watch TV, the family dog barks outside. A solemn young man has parked his car in the driveway. He walks to the north porch door and knocks. Diane gets up and is the first to greet the visitor on the porch.

Good morning, the man says. I’m with the United States Army.

By now, Diane’s mother, Marianne, has stepped outside to join them on the porch.

I have some news about Michael, the soldier says, hesitating. It was his wish that this news be told to the whole family.

Marianne’s eyes widen. My son! she shrieks. My son!

I’m sorry, ma’am, the soldier says as he tries to calm her. I can’t say anything more until your husband is present. Do you know where he is?

He looks at the two girls, and they shake their heads, dumbfounded. He looks back at their mother, who’s clearly distraught.

Where is my son? she wails. Tell me he is all right!

The soldier finally relents.

Michael was a gunner on a helicopter, he says. His helicopter was shot down at tree level by the Vietcong in a heavy gunfight. He’s missing in action.

Marianne collapses. She sobs to her oldest daughter, Go get your father!

Diane doesn’t know where to begin to look for her father Stanley, but she follows the Army rep to his car and they leave together. They sit silently in the car, listening to the engine hum, as Diane directs the soldier to her grandparents’ house. Diane’s father isn’t there; he and her grandfather left earlier in the morning. While at the house, Diane tells her step-grandmother what has happened, and Grandma Eleanor gets on the phone to spread the news.

They go next to Uncle Russell’s house. Again, Diane’s father isn’t there. But she talks to Aunt Virginia, who also reaches for the phone when they leave.

By this time, the soldier’s patience is wearing thin.

I have to return to base, he says after they arrive back at the Seibert house. I’m sorry. This is part of my job I hate.

Desperate now, Diane runs up the lane to Ora Tucker’s house, over a half mile away. Her father isn’t there, either. She sprints back from the neighbor’s house, her lungs aching and her heart pounding in her ears.

Then it dawns on her where her father is.

She jumps on her bay mare and rides bareback to a field nearby where, sure enough, her father and grandfather are baling hay.

Michael’s been shot down! she screams.

Both men stand still. They say nothing.

Diane turns her horse around and charges home. She finds her mother in her parents’ bedroom lying across the bed, wailing, cursing, pulling at her hair. Barbara had been alone with her but didn’t know how to comfort her mother.

Still hysterical, Marianne grabs a suitcase, throws it on the bed, and starts filling it with clothes. She looks up to see Stanley in the bedroom doorway. His face is pale, expressionless.

We have to find him! Marianne shrieks. We have to get hold of the Red Cross now! We can’t waste time! We have to find him!

Stanley feels the walls closing in on him. His world is coming apart. Marianne’s anguish suddenly focuses on him.

I’m going to divorce you, she says. I’m leaving you right now.

The two then go at it, arguing fiercely.

Finally, Diane screams, If you get a divorce, I won’t live with either one of you. I’ll run away!

Barbara, meanwhile, has run off to another room to hide.

#

Three decades have passed since that fateful day, but the question on everyone’s lips back then—What happened to Michael?—remains unanswered.

Michael’s father, now in his mid-70s, admits that his memory has faded. Piecing together the puzzle of Michael’s death is made more difficult because many who played crucial roles in those turbulent times have either passed on or moved away.

Still, fragments remain. As do doubts. A cloud hangs over Michael’s death that hasn’t faded with memory.

I was told by one person that the two pilots were high on dope the day they were shot down, Stanley recalls. "Michael was a gunner on that mission. Supposedly they spotted one bag of rice in a paddy, and that’s what they went down to destroy.

"Then they sent an award back for him being responsible for destroying a large enemy hospital complex. I didn’t know that we were supposed to destroy hospitals. When I questioned this officer,